Whole Foods to Rate Its Produce and Flowers for Environmental Impact

Whole Foods Market on Wednesday began a ratings program for fruits, vegetables and flowers aimed at giving consumers more information about pesticide and water use, the treatment of farm workers and waste management, and other issues surrounding the food they eat.

The upscale grocery chain will rate the produce of suppliers electing to participate in the program, Responsibly Grown, as “good,” “better,” or “best,” depending on, for example, how they handle plastic waste in their operations and whether they provide conservation areas to foster bees, butterflies and other pollinators.

“This is the latest example of our commitment to transparency and sustainable agriculture,” said Matt Rogers, who handles standards and sourcing at Whole Foods. He said the company hoped the scoring system would encourage farmers to address the impact of agriculture on human health and the environment.

About half the produce sold in 390 of Whole Foods’ 399 stores will carry Responsibly Grown labels, although the amount will vary from store to store. The company’s British stores are not yet included in the program.

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John Lyman, whose family has grown apples, peaches, pears and berries on their farm in Middlefield, Conn., said he welcomed the Whole Foods program. The program is voluntary.CreditJessica Hill for The New York Times

Although a leader in the upscale segment of the food industry, Whole Foods has struggled to accelerate its sales growth this year, and even though its earnings in the quarter that ended July 6 beat analysts’ estimates, its stock is down more than 30 percent this year. The company remains saddled with a reputation for higher prices, and it is facing more competition from mainstream retailers like Walmart, which announced a big push into organics in April.

Earlier this month, Walmart stole a beat on Whole Foods and announced its own plans to curb the environmental impact of the food it sells, together with plans to help shoppers learn more about the food they buy there. Among its partners in the efforts are food processing titans like General Mills and Cargill.

On Monday, McDonald’s unveiled a social media program that allows its customers to ask questions like “What part of the chicken goes into McNuggets?” and “Do your hamburgers contain pink slime?”

Whole Foods already has a program that rates animal welfare practices, an “eco scale” it applies to household cleaners and a program that assesses the sustainability of seafood, and by 2018 all the foods sold in its stores will carry labels indicating whether they contain genetically engineered ingredients.

Other grocery chains have scrambled to adopt similar programs, and food manufacturers have changed formulations and packaging in response to many of those programs. “I think this is going to put pressure on other food retailers to do something in this regard,” said Tom Beddard, an organic farmer who is participating in the Whole Foods program.

Mr. Beddard grows vegetables and melons on a total of some 2,500 acres in Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania collectively known as Lady Moon Farms. His produce is already certified as organic, and he employs his workers year-round, moving them around the three locations rather than simply to pick a crop. The farms are also certified for food safety practices and fair trade.

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CreditWhole Foods Market

He is able to use those certifications to increase his “score” in the Whole Foods program, as well as other practices that he maintains as an organic farmer. But only one Lady Moon Farms earned the “best” designation. “We were a little weak on our use of renewable resources in Georgia and Florida,” Mr. Beddard said.

The program inspired a vigorous discussion at the annual meeting in March of growers for Red Tomato, a nonprofit marketing and distribution platform for small growers, according to John Lyman, one of its members. While the Red Tomato growers have an “eco-certification” program they follow, Mr. Lyman said Whole Foods’ requirements go beyond that into farmworker welfare, conservation, waste reduction and clean energy.

“For instance, they want to know about earthworms and how many I have in my soil,” said Mr. Lyman, whose family has grown apples, peaches, pears and various berries on their farm in Middlefield, Conn., since 1741. “I thought, How do I count every earthworm? It’s going to take a while.”

But he said he welcomed the opportunity to learn from other growers through the program and that it gives a grower like him, whose produce has earned a “good” rating to start, incentives to try out and adopt new practices.

Compared to the meat and seafood it sells, a greater percentage of Whole Foods’s fruits, flowers and vegetables are imported from overseas, where standards for pesticide use, soil amendments and other things are different, but foreign producers also will have to comply.

“If you pressed me to identify what I think is the component that’s going to make the biggest difference for people shopping in their stores, it’s the application of a pesticide policy universally to anyone shipping fresh produce or floral items, whether they’re coming from India or Mexico,” said Charles Benbrook, a professor at Washington State University who works on analytical systems for measuring food quality and safety and was among the experts who helped Whole Foods develop its program.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the year by which Whole Foods Market plans to have labels on all the foods in its stores stating whether they contain genetically engineered ingredients. It is 2018, not next year.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Whole Foods to Rate Produce on Its Environmental Impact. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe